Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join - they have stifled growth to a point where it is obvious to all. A few weeks ago it was a Rocket Ship, now it is a Blimp! Total Bias?

Donald Trump claimed Friday that Twitter has purged 'many people' from his base of followers and made it more difficult to join his audience, asking whether political 'bias' is to blame.

The social media platform announced in July that it had deleted millions of accounts related to Russian bot networks. That appears to have removed more than 7.7 million of Trump's followers since early April.

His overall audience, and the number of people among them whose existence can be confirmed, continued to enlarge throughout the year, and haven't stopped growing.

President Trump carped on Friday about Twitter supposedly limiting his audience size on purpose

He tweeted that 'Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join'

APRIL 1: More than six months ago Trump had 49.7 million followers, of which 13.9 million were 'fake,' accorting to TwitterAudit.com

OCTOBER 23: The president's overall follower count had grown to 55.3 million but he still lost 7.7 million bots, spammers and inactive accounts

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'Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join - they have stifled growth to a point where it is obvious to all,' Trump tweeted Friday.

A few weeks ago it was a Rocket Ship, now it is a Blimp! Total Bias?'

According to the algorithm used by TwitterAudit.com, Trump's audience of 49.7 million in early April included 13.9 million phony accounts.

This week he has 55.3 million followers. Just 6.1 million – less than half of April's total – fell in that category.

The president's Twitter audience grew most slowly in June and July, the timeframe when the platform swung the axe most.

Twitter deleted more than 1 million accounts per day in June alone, just part of a liquidation of more than 70 million. There has been no significant news reporting of people complaining that their own genuine accounts were swept up in the dragnet.

Snapshots of TwitterAudit.com maintained at Archive.org provide a look at how Trump's follow count changed over time (top to bottom) in early June, early August and early October. His follow count of real people (in green) continued to rise

The company has said it focuses on spam accounts and automated 'bots.'

Websites that count 'fake' followers also generally include accounts that are formant for long periods of time. While real people may have created them, they don't necessarily represent actual eyeballs on tweets.

Social media giants have faced scrutiny from federal lawmakers and international regulators for doing too little to prevent the spread of false, misleading and malicious content.